Former US Secretaries of State Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo have defended Israel and called for safeguarding US-Israeli relations, while downplaying Israel's genocide in Gaza during a joint appearance at the annual conference of the Jewish Federations of North America.
Both Blinken and Pompeo have records of strong support for Israel.
Pompeo, who served in Donald Trump's first administration, said the recent administration's pledge to cut $4bn in annual military aid to Israel after this year will do little to change a relationship he describes as "deep and unbreakable".
Addressing the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, DC, Pompeo said whether the US provides the funding was "much less material than the nature of the relationship between the United States and Israel".
"Those institutional relationships are deep and unbreakable and really solid," he said, referencing his personal experience in office during Trump's first term in the White House. "Whether we provide that particular [aid], there will still be deep connectivity. There will still be lots of assistance, and there will be a partnership that is historically important, not just for Israel but for the United States of America as well," he told the charity and advocacy group.
When asked if Israel could rehabilitate its international reputation, he said, "You are so fundamentally in the right and evil is so one-sided," adding: "Never equivocate about this moral distinction."
Blinken, who served under President Joe Biden, claimed that Israel did not seek to harm Palestinian civilians in Gaza and that its critics were ignorant of history. "The Israelis did, for the most part, the bare minimum of what they felt they needed to do for people who were stuck in the middle of this crossfire," he said. "But that is vastly different, vastly different, from an intent to do them harm — the target was Hamas."
On the Iran assault, Pompeo said that the US and Israel needed to continue striking targets inside Iran, while Blinken said that a major escalation would be a "terrible idea" and that economic pressure should be used to convince Iran to negotiate.
Blinken and other senior Biden officials who oversaw US policy toward Israel during its genocide in Gaza, including Kamala Harris, have been targeted by pro-Palestine activists who seek to bar them from any future Democratic administration, while support for conditioning or blocking US arms transfers to Israel has become mainstream among Democrats due to the assaults, including on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
In a phone interview with Fox & Friends on the morning of the US midterm elections, on November 3, Trump said, "we made a deal months ago that we're stopping" and "by the end of this year we won't be paying Israel." He said he made the deal with Netanyahu to stop giving Israel "$4 billion a year," and added that Netanyahu "brought it up."
He said Israel would remain free to buy American weapons and could receive additional help if needed. Asked whether he meant military aid, financial aid or weapons deliveries, he did not clarify.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has responded to Trump's announcement that the United States will stop paying Israel military aid by the end of this year. It did not deny the announcement, and described it as a shift from aid to "partnership," the Times of Israel reported.
At the annual conference, Pompeo also stated that "we [Israel and the US] struck a hospital in Gaza." "You don't know how hard Secretary Blinken and I worked to make sure we didn't strike hospitals anywhere," he claimed.
